The Mission of the Gaza Tribunal: To Stop Genocide
Why do we need the Gaza Tribunal?
The Gaza Tribunal was formally launched in London on November I, 2024 by a group of individuals deeply troubled by the failure of existing structures and procedures of global governance to stop the extreme and prolonged genocide in Gaza and hold Israel and complicit governments, international institutions, and corporations accountable. In light of this we launched this civil society initiative with its urgent primary mission of stopping the killing in Gaza and establish a permanent, reliable ceasefire, which the UN and the parties have failed to do for over 14 months of carnage.
The guiding aspirations of the GT was to represent the peoples of the world in its endeavor to overcome this horrifying spectacle of daily atrocities and resist temptations to accept our collective helplessness in the face of such totalizing devastation. From its start the convenors of GT wanted to ensure the integrity of the civil society nature of the tribunal. In that spirit, GT convenors worked to ensure political independence from governments and active politicians coupled with a refusal to accept governmental or tainted funding.
Against this background, the planning and organization of the GT was beset by an initial challenge of making its mission clear. This was necessary, above all, by the reality that both the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) were already investigating the criminal charges against Israel. Of special relevance, the ICJ was actively considering South Africa’s submission alleging Israel’s violation of the Genocide Convention. How could a civil society tribunal add anything to the work of this respected judicial process, an organ of the UN enjoying a preeminent status when called upon to resolve legal disputes among governments? What could be our value added? Who the hell did we think we were?
GT’s response goes like this: By its operations the GT will reach results on the central question of genocide and related criminality much quicker than the ICJ, which is expected to take several years before issuing a final judgment; also a fundamental justification for this kind of tribunal is GT’s freedom from legalistic rules limiting the scope of inquiry, making it able to address directly underlying questions of justice; additionally important, the GT will produce readable texts informed by international law, yet not burdened by the technicalities of law, and thus far more accessible to the public via media outlets and political gatherings. In sum, the GT is not seeking to compete with the ICJ but to play a complementary role that is deeply appreciative of the contributions of the ICJ while making distinctive contributions of its own that overcome some of the limitations a strictly legal approach, however authoritative.
As with past civil society tribunals that have addressed violent conflict, the civic energies used to establish such a tribunal only become available if the formal structures of authority in international relations have failed to halt the carnage and associated criminal wrongdoing.
Explaining the Distinctiveness of the Gaza Tribunal
Perhaps, most important and least understood aspect of the GT initiative is the deliberate political nature of the GT process with respect to the nature of the proceedings and the goals being pursued. This kind of civil society framing of its judicial nature is quite different from analogous framing in the setting of an inter-governmental or national court. It starts from the premise that the policies, practices, and politicians of the accused state are guilty of severe wrongdoing, ethically, legally, and in a deep sense, spiritually. Unlike governmentally established courts this kind of tribunal does not accord due process or presumptions of innocence to governments or individuals accused of criminality.
This is also unlike conventional court proceedings that are not viewed as fair or valid unless the defendants are not given a sincere and adequate opportunity to present arguments defending their conduct. In this sense, the GT approach is quite different from the Nuremberg trials of surviving Nazi political figures and military commanders after World War II who accorded due process rights, although the process was criticized as ‘victors’ justice’ because the crimes of the victors were neither investigated nor prosecuted.
The GT starts from a presupposition of guilt based on perceptions and evidence, and is motivated by twin desires to document the criminal wrongdoing as authoritatively as possible, and to an even greater extent, to mobilize persons in their individual and collective identities from around the world including moral and cultural authority figures (such as the UN Secretary General, the Pope, Nobel Peace Prize winners) as well as faith-based groups, labor unions, and human rights organizations. In the wider understanding of law, GT undertaking can be regarded as ethical or advocacy jurisprudence, a form of lawmaking not currently taught in even the world’s best law schools in the most democratic societies, despite being an indispensable instrument of resistance against unchecked evil behavior of which genocide is widely regarded as the crime of crimes. Unlike the ICJ or ICC, the GT can encourage enforcement by was of civic activism taking a variety of forms, without needing governments to provide enforcement capabilities when politically willing to do so, which never happened so far.
To be clear, the primary goal of the GT is action not judgment. Its orientation is one of peoplepower, not institutional authority. Its success will be measured by its societal impacts, especially with respect to the intensity and quality of solidarity initiatives around the world of the kind that the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) has long typified in relation to the Palestinian struggle. Similar nonviolent solidarity initiatives were a crucial element in the successful campaign to reshape racist South Africa from being an apartheid governance regime to becoming a constitutional democracy with equals rights for all citizens regardless of race. A generation earlier, the anti-war movement opposing the US intervention in Vietnam exhibited the influence of a mobilized people in several countries (most notably, the US and France, to bring a failing foreign policy of the most powerful country in the world to an end, a process that gave rise to the first civil society tribunal sponsored by the Russell Foundation in the UK, featuring the personal leadership of the great philosopher, Bertrand Russell, and the participation of the leading public intellectual of his era, Jean-Paul Sartre.
The Global Turn Toward Legitimacy Wars
These is a tendency of public opinion to be molded by the modern state indirectly largely by overseeing a corporatized mainstream media. In turn, governmental institutions are kept in line by powerful special interests and their well-funded think tanks. This has led to the acceptance of misleading beliefs that since World War II military power retains its earlier decisive historical agency. The historical record contradicts this belief. Every important war since World War II, including the anti-colonial wars have been won by the weaker side militarily.
Israel seems an exception to this trend, but its wars are better understood as battles in an ongoing and unresolved war in the struggle over sovereignty and dominance of historic Palestine. The outcome in Palestine is not yet decided, and despite the genocidal carnage in Gaza, the Israelis are losing the all-important Legitimacy War fought symbolically for the control of the high ground of law, morality, and public opinion. Except in special cases, for instance, Western Sahara, Kashmir, and Tibet, the winner of Legitimacy Wars in the end controls the political outcome. At the same time the people on the winning side may suffer great losses during the often long struggles to cross the finish line. The GT can be interpreted as an example of a symbolic battlefield in the Legitimacy War fought over the outcome of the Israel/Palestine struggle that has lasted more than a century.
A Concluding Assessment
If the GT is successful, it will hasten a ceasefire and establish a comprehensive archive documenting Israel’s criminality as well as encouraging solidarity militancy of peoples throughout the world. It also contributes to the process of legitimating an alternative paradigm of international law that derives its influence from people and their sense of justice rather than relies exclusively on governments and their international institutions. The Gaza ordeal should make persons of conscience concerned and receptive to civil society undertakings of the sort illustrated by the GT. To do so acknowledges the complementary role of civil society in educating and mobilizing citizens of the world to endorse the view that the future of international law and justice often depends on their direct engagement in current political controversies. In turn, this populist backstop of morally and legally driven activism to complement governmental authority over our lives has a broad potential to help humanity meet mounting global challenges effectively and fairly.
